Provision of Technical Assistance to Rwanda Private Sector Organisations and Civil Society Organisations

TradeMark East Africa (TMEA), on behalf of its partners within the Private Sector and Civil Society, joined forces with Enabling Environments (EE) to provide technical assistance to key Private Society Organisations (PSOs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), to offer support in strengthening their interventions in the areas of research and advocacy and to promote private-public dialogue so as to effectively represent the interests of its members. The project started in December 2015.

The Enabling Environments Technical Assistance Team (EE TAT) supported the PSOs and CSOs on five platforms: Taxation, Professional services, Standards, Environment and Logistics, which comprised the Team Leader, two senior local experts, and short-term experts with specialisation in Trade policy development, Communication, Taxation, EAC Metrology, Advocacy and lobbying.

Enabling Environments’ project’s implementation resulted into 19 events facilitations (workshops and training sessions; technical and high-level meetings between stakeholders; training sessions on various capacity building topics) and 26 documents produced (position papers, issues papers, terms of references development, research and reports). The team also conducted the “Benchmarking the cost of production for Rwanda based manufacturers”, a study aimed at supporting the PSF and Rwanda Association of Manufactures’ endeavour for dialogue and resolutions with the Government and other key players on behalf of the manufacturing sector.

EE Technical Assistance Team provided a sustainable framework through further research areas, recommendations to each platform, capacity building on trade and policy making, advice and support to PSOs and CSOs on the implementation of the advocacy strategies and promoted the beneficial results of public and private dialogue. The project was successfully implemented and ended in March 2016, and TMEA was fully satisfied with the delivery and performance of Enabling Environments.